


2:31

by lanayrusea



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Humor, Light Angst, f o u n d f a m i l y, just kidding it's exactly as likely as you think, me? writing jake pov? it's more likely than you think, which is to say very
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-09 23:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20125948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanayrusea/pseuds/lanayrusea
Summary: At 2:31 a.m., Jake walks into the office at Amnesty Lodge to find Barclay at Mama’s desk, poring over paperwork under the light of a strained old lamp, and Dani curled up on the couch with her face in the cushions and a blanket pulled almost all the way over her head. The only way he knows it’s her is the unmistakable yellow hair—and who else would be here at this hour? It’s 2:31.





	2:31

**Author's Note:**

> you've seen the [spiritual sequel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19870891), now get ready for the spiritual prequel! y'all remember in griffin's pokemon y nuzlocke when he catches yveltal and goes "you live with ME now, I'M YOUR DAD! _i'm your dad now_"? bc thats barclay @ jake and dani tell me i'm wrong
> 
> this takes place toward the end of the water arc (PLS DON'T SQUINT TOO HARD AT THE TIMELINE), also little spoiler warning for what kind of sylvan jake is. i hope you like it :)

At 2:31 a.m., Jake walks into the office at Amnesty Lodge to find Barclay at Mama’s desk, poring over paperwork under the light of a strained old lamp, and Dani curled up on the couch with her face in the cushions and a blanket pulled almost all the way over her head. The only way he knows it’s her is the unmistakable yellow hair—and who else would be here at this hour? It’s 2:31.

At 2:17, he had bolted awake in a haze of sweat and fear and spat blood from his lip into the water glass beside his bed. Sheets tangled around him, alarm clock flashing bright red in his face, something distorted behind his eyes that he couldn’t let go of couldn’t stop seeing couldn’t stop _stop _until he raked his fingernails down his thigh so hard the amount of dead skin he dug up could have been evidence in a murder trial.

At 2:22, he threw open the window and staggered into the bathroom to wash his face and rub cold water on his neck and blot at the blood congealing on his lip. The harsh overhead light hurt his eyes, but he was scared of the dark at 2:22. He dried his hands and face with a scratchy old towel and went back into his room to put on socks, sweatpants, and a clean t-shirt, cold air stinging.

At 2:28, he was awake, and didn’t know what to do about it.

At 2:31, Barclay says, “What the hell? You too?”

Dani lifts her head blearily and twists around on the couch. “What?”

“Nothing,” Barclay says. “Go back to sleep.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” she mumbles.

“Then go to sleep. Jake, what is it?”

Jake doesn’t know what he’s walked into but apparently it isn’t friendly at this hour. “Nothing,” he says. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…I’ll just go.”

Barclay sighs and pushes his chair away from the desk. “No, no,” he says, “stay. I’m sorry I snapped at you. It’s just” —he laughs tonelessly— “Mama left behind a whole lot of work even I don’t know what to do with.”

Jake doesn’t like to think about where Mama is or is not, not least of all because the Sylvans have, in her absence, begun to worry about the lodge itself. “Is it, like…taxes stuff?”

Barclay smiles, though it’s a bit like a grimace. “And other human nonsense. Jake, why are you up?”

He loves both other parties in this room but love alone is not enough to make him go back to wherever he was at 2:17. He sits down on the couch, and Dani makes room for him without looking up. He gets under the blanket and leans against her legs. “Couldn’t sleep, I guess.”

Barclay gives him the same genre of look he gives Aubrey when he catches her throwing out breadcrust. In this case it’s an effective combination of _yeah, right_ and _well, now I’m going to worry_. (More broadly the emotions are _really?_ and _okay, fair_.) Dani puts her feet in Jake’s lap.

“I’m sorry things aren’t more interesting over here,” Barclay says. “It really is just work. I’d entertain you if I could.”

Jake nudges Dani’s leg with his knee. “What about you?”

She says something into the pillows.

“I think it’s trying to communicate,” Jake says.

She kicks him in the ribs.

“_Ow!_ Dan!”

“Barclaaay,” she says, voice muffled. “Jake’s being mean.”

Barclay is occupied with a calculator and doesn’t look up. “Don’t be mean.”

Jake huffs and slumps over onto Dani’s side. She gives a surprised squeak and tries to elbow him off, but he doesn’t budge.

“Unbelievable,” she says. “You’re such a baby.”

“Throw all the insults you want,” he says. “I’m still winning.”

“You won’t have won when I suffocate, seal boy.”

“Ah, now that’s where you’re wrong.”

“_Be nice_,” comes Barclay’s voice from under his mountain of paperwork.

Jake says, “I am nice. See?” He butterfly-kisses Dani’s arm and she uses it to whack him in the jaw.

“_Ow_,” he says, lip throbbing. “Cruel. Hateful.”

“Baby. Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“I’m too cool to have a bedtime.”

Dani starts to say something but dissolves into laughter before she can finish. Jake isn’t sure whether to be offended or proud.

“Barclay,” he says instead, “are we helping? Is this the environment you wanted to do taxes in?”

“Tax Day is in April, kids,” Barclay says. “Better learn that soon.”

Dani is laughing too hard for Jake to take that somber advice to heart. He sits up again and tugs on her arm.

“Stop it,” he says. “I am cool.”

She manages, “So cool. Ice cold.”

“You’re damn right!”

Dani catches her breath and tries to turn to face him. “You’re taking up too much space.”

“What, _now_ you want to get up?”

The blanket is tangled up underneath them and she grabs it and uses it as leverage to pull herself up, yanks it free, and smooths it out. She looks at Jake to complain or be mean, then stops. Her expression goes blank.

“What happened to your face?” she says.

“Huh?” Jake automatically puts a hand over his mouth. “Oh, uh—nothing. I did that.”

She doesn’t look away. “Barclay.”

Her tone of voice must catch him, because he looks up from the desk for the first time since they started tussling.

“For real,” Jake says, “I did it to myself—”

“What is it?” Barclay says.

“Is it still bleeding?” Dani says, and tries to get Jake’s hand away from his face, but he shoulders her back.

“It’s not, I just bit my lip—Barclay, it’s nothing—”

Barclay is coming over anyway. Dani finally catches his hand and pulls it away, gripping his wrist like he’s going to try and make a break for it. Jake feels like he’s in a petri dish.

“What?” Barclay says. Dani gestures to the scab on Jake’s mouth.

“It’s not a big deal,” he says. “Do I whip out the first aid kit every time you get a paper cut?”

“That isn’t a paper cut, Jake,” says Barclay. “You look like—like someone slugged you with brass knuckles on.”

“That’s evocative,” he says sourly, but inside he’s rattled. He doesn’t remember exactly how the cut looked in the bathroom mirror at 2:22, but it definitely didn’t look like that.

“You really did that on your own?” Barclay says.

“Well, it’s not from Dan here hitting me repeatedly in the face, so—”

“Hush,” she says.

“Tattletale,” Jake says.

“_Hush_.” She hugs his arm aggressively. “I almost thought I _did_ do it.”

Jake allows himself to feel bad about this for half a second, then rolls his eyes.

“So long as it’s not bleeding anymore, I guess it’s okay,” Barclay says. He puts a hand out. “Can I…?”

“Uh,” says Jake. “Sure?”

He takes Jake’s chin with just the tips of his fingers and angles his face toward the scant electric light on the other side of the room. Jake doesn’t know what he’s looking for and, in addition to being in a petri dish, now feels slightly manhandled, but the serious look in Barclay’s eyes keeps him from protesting. He’s not going to be a _baby_ about it.

“Well,” Barclay says, “best I can tell, it is closed. Looks pretty badly bruised around the scab, though.” He takes his hand away, and Jake’s skin feels a little cold. “How did you do that, Jake?”

He shrugs. “You’ve never accidentally bit your tongue really hard?”

“Not _that_ hard,” says Dani quietly.

Jake expects Barclay to say something similar, but he stays silent. Actually, he’s looking at Jake like he knows what Jake isn’t saying, and why. For a terrifying 2:17-esque moment Jake wants to stand up and run out of the office or claw at his arm so hard he draws blood but then Barclay blinks and looks away and it’s 2:42.

“Just don’t mess with it,” he says, “alright?”

Jake says, “Yeah, Dani. Don’t mess with it.”

“_Barclaaaay_,” she says.

Suddenly Barclay leans forward and hugs them both and Jake is so surprised he forgets to tell Dani she’s being whiny. Her grip on his arm goes slack and he imagines she looks how he feels, shadowed eyes wide and mouth slightly open. At this angle Barclay is backlit by the lamp, so even when he gives their shoulders one last squeeze and steps back, Jake can’t see his face.

“You two should go to bed,” he says. “If you wake up so cranky someone’s eye’ll get taken out or something.”

“Mine,” they both say at once. Barclay laughs.

“What about you, Barclay?” says Dani. “Are you going to finish all that tonight?”

He glances at the chaos atop the desk and stares at it for a long moment, then sighs. “Actually,” he says, “you’re right. I have a better idea. Are either of you hungry?”

Jake and Dani grin at each other and he thinks this is the feeling Mama means when she says _like a kid on Christmas morning_.

2:50 finds them in the lodge kitchen, measuring flour and cracking eggs and boiling water for tea in the meantime. Barclay does most the work—Jake thinks some small but vocal part of him probably doesn’t trust them with the stove—but it isn’t a hard job. Jake pulls a box of nettle tea down from a cupboard and starts scavenging for mugs. On the other side of the room Dani emerges from the pantry looking hassled.

“Where are the chocolate chips?” she whispers. “I can’t find them anywhere.”

“Why are you whispering?” says Jake.

“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s three a.m. This feels illicit.”

“Illicit pancakes,” Barclay agrees. “Sorry, Dani, I hid them—they should be in the little drawer with all the dried fruit.”

“Barclay, you sly bastard,” comes her voice from inside the pantry. “Imagine if I had accidentally grabbed the raisins.”

The electric kettle clicks and Jake starts pouring hot water. Dani measures out chocolate chips for the batter Barclay is mixing, then comes to the table for her tea.

“I feel like I should go wake Aubrey up,” she says, blowing steam from her mug. “She would want chocolate pancakes.”

Jake raises an eyebrow. “Don’t pretend your reasons are entirely selfless.”

She turns a dainty shade of pink. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re blushing.”

The pink deepens. “It’s from the steam!”

He eyes her a moment longer before they both break into lopsided smiles. What’s embarrassing in the daytime is funny at 2:59.

“Sure,” Jake says. “The steam.”

“You know me,” Dani says. “Just trying to be subtle.”

“Subtle!” he says. “Don’t make me laugh. ‘Oh, Aubrey, come have lunch with me. Aubrey, come in the spring with me—’”

“_Shut up_,” she hisses, trying not to smile. “You evil seal boy.”

“Oxymoron,” he says. “We’re all angelic.”

At the stove Barclay makes the breadcrust face, prominently enough that Dani and Jake both start laughing. He waves his spatula at them and makes threatening noises, then turns back to the pancakes.

“Yeah,” Jake says, when he’s caught his breath, “I think you should go get her.”

“You do?” Dani says, very quickly.

“Sure,” he says. “If you’re the one to wake her up she won’t get mad.”

“Oh, _I_ see,” Dani says, crossing her arms. “This isn’t about me at all. It’s about your cowardice.”

Jake gets up from the table with a loud _screech_ of his chair. “Barclay! Do you need help?”

“No?” he says.

“Great,” says Jake. “Tell me what to do.”

“I’ll be right back,” says Dani, getting up as well. As she ducks out of the kitchen she mouths at Jake: _Coward! _He sticks out his tongue.

Barclay says, “Sometimes I get bothered by how hard it is to follow you two. Then sometimes I manage it and I remember I’m okay.”

Jake is a little too confused by this to laugh. “Hard to follow? Me and Dan?”

“You move pretty quick,” Barclay says. “I’m also just sort of old now, huh.”

“Not that old.”

“Nice of you. Pass me that plate?”

Jake does as much and Barclay flips the first golden pancake onto it. This close to the stove Jake can feel the heat on his mouth, torn lip pulsing under its scab, and he resists the urge to touch it. It feels like a bandage he’s supposed to take off. He isn’t sure he won’t accidentally tear it in his sleep.

“Jake,” says Barclay.

He glances up. “Yes?”

Barclay pours another pancake and uses the measuring cup to even it out on the pan. Finally, he says, “I don’t want to overstep.”

_Oh, here we go_. Jake shakes his head. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”

He ignores this. “I know it’s rough for everyone, what with the spring being off limits, but—”

“Really, it’s okay.”

“_Jake_,” he says, with half of a laugh. He takes him by the shoulder. “Look at you.”

Jake doesn’t know what he looks like. He breaks eye contact. “You give this talk to Dani when she shows up in the office at two in the morning?”

“_Yes_,” Barclay says. “Yes, I do. And to Aubrey. Even to Mama.”

Jake has a hard time believing Mama is ever scared of the things she’s been fighting since before he was born. Hell, give him a few more water monsters and brushes with fate and he’ll be fearless, too.

“Well,” Jake says. “You don’t have to.”

Barclay purses his lips. “Because you’re tougher than that?”

“No,” he says. “I only said you don’t have to.”

Barclay puts down the measuring cup and pulls him into a close hug. Jake seizes up, then relaxes. He closes his eyes.

“I don’t do it because I have to,” Barclay says.

He links his arms around Barclay’s back. “Thanks,” he says. “Thanks, Barclay.”

“It wasn’t a small thing that happened to you, you know.”

He knows. “I think the pancake is burning.”

“It’s super burning.” Barclay gently detaches himself. “We’ll give it to Aubrey.”

On cue the girls show up. Jake pours a fourth cup of tea and slides it to Aubrey as she collapses at the table, quilt drawn tight around her shoulders.

“This,” she says blearily, “had better be good.”

“It’s chocolate pancakes,” he says. “That’s the dictionary entry for ‘good.’”

“It’s still three in the morning. You people are crazy.”

Dani sits down next to her and tugs at the blanket. “Share.”

Aubrey shares and tries to put her head on Dani’s shoulder, but Dani jostles her away.

“No, no,” she says. “Stay awake. Just share.”

“So unkind,” Aubrey says. “Jake, isn’t she—whoa.”

“Yeah,” he says, and feels the pain in his mouth as she draws his attention to it again. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You get punched?” Aubrey says.

“I did,” he says. “I did, actually.”

“At last,” says Dani. “The truth comes out.”

At 3:14, the pancakes are finished, and Barclay brings them over with apologies about the burnt ones, which Aubrey claims immediately. There’s chewing and quiet chatter but Jake is zoned out for most of it. He gives up on the pancakes fairly quickly—it’s painful moving his mouth so much—and just drinks his tea in silence while the girls pester Barclay about some things or others.

“—chocolate chips in the raisin drawer—”

“That is quite dangerous, that could go _very_ wrong—”

“Yeah, but _I_ know I put them in there—”

Jake presses the tea mug against his cheek and his mouth and tries not to think about 2:17, but it’s been chasing him all night. Dark flashes of something he couldn’t get out of his eyes an hour ago and now can barely grasp, iron and salt mixed like medicine but he can’t remember what he’s sick with or how he caught it, only that it makes it hard to breathe. He shuts his eyes and inhales and searches for the scent of nettle or chocolate or Dani’s shampoo but nothing comes, and for a horrifying moment he’s so certain he’s holding the cup of water back in his bedroom that he shoves the mug away before he can smell the blood in it.

It’s just tea. He takes another breath. No blood in the tea mug. No water in his lungs.

He emerges from 2:17 for a moment to discover the rules of chess are being discussed at the table. Dani is explaining castling, which without a board or pieces involves a lot of complicated hand motions, but Aubrey looks enraptured. Actually, she’s not watching Dani’s hands at all—she’s just looking at her face. Barclay, Jake realizes, has been stealing covert glances at him for probably a while now. He catches him in the act next time it happens, but Barclay only smiles.

“What do you think, boxer boy?” says Dani.

Jake looks away from Barclay. “I think I don’t know what we’re talking about.”

She glares at him. “You’re not tired, are you?”

“Hey, you were the one nearly asleep on the office couch.”

She waves a hand. “That was then. This is now. I’m offended you can’t find it in you to pay attention.”

“I know how to play chess,” he says.

Aubrey laughs once. “That’s right. He just doesn’t know how to win at it.”

He aims a kick at her under the table and misses. “How did we get on this topic? Someone enter a chess tournament I don’t know about?”

“It was me, I think,” says Barclay. “Said something about pawns.”

“Are you gonna eat that?” says Aubrey.

Jake pushes his last pancake toward her. She tears it in half and offers part to Dani, who takes it with a shrug. Barclay stands up from the table.

“Well,” he says, “you youths are free to do whatever you want, I’m not the boss of you, but I got to go to bed now or—or else Agent Stern will ask me if the reason I’m so tired is because I went out chasing Bigfoot last night.”

“He will ask that anyway,” Aubrey says sagely.

Barclay smiles. “Little does he know. Goodnight, everyone.”

“Thanks for the pancakes,” Jake says, and looks at Barclay a little more head-on than necessary. Barclay gets it. As he goes Jake wonders what happened to make him this way.

“Maybe me too,” Aubrey says, and yawns.

“Aw,” says Dani, “really?”

“You woke me up. Maybe you interrupted my REM cycle or something. Isn’t that bad for you?”

“You can’t guilt me. I got you for pancakes.”

Jake doesn’t want to listen to them flirt their way through this argument. “Well, if this party’s dead…”

Dani sighs. “Yeah,” she says. “I guess so. It was good while it lasted.”

“Take me to my room,” Aubrey says, and latches onto her. “I’m so tired I’ll run into all the walls.”

_A likely story_, Jake doesn’t say. He stands and tucks his chair in. “Goodnight, you two. See you in the morning.”

“Night, Jake.”

“Goodnight!”

He leaves the kitchen, though not before he glimpses Dani throw an arm around Aubrey and hoist her to her feet. Like they’re in some kind of rom-com. Maybe that’s an okay thing.

The rest of the lodge feels remarkably quiet and dark now, even though it’s 3:38 and by all means no one should be up and about, and for a split-second as he walks down the hall to his room he’s confronted by 2:22 but he pushes past it. He isn’t afraid of the dark right now. He’s afraid of walking headfirst into a doorjamb.

The door to his room is unlocked, of course, even though Mama told them all to start locking up when Agent Stern invited himself into their house. Jake is pretty sure the man is harmless, but more than that he just forgets his key. He shuts the door behind him and kicks off his slippers, then switches on a lamp, innocent shadows falling across the floor. The window is still open from earlier, and the temperatures inside and outside are definitely nearing something like equilibrium, which on the one hand means it’s freezing in here but on the other hand means all the nightmare heat has been washed away by the breeze. Jake likes the cold. He sits on his bed and takes a sip of water from the glass on th

_no_

it slips from his fingers and he tries to yell but there’s water and blood and salt in his mouth and in a suffocated panic he swallows it and the glass hits the floor with a _crash_ and shatters and Jake is _dizzy_, chest heaving as he coughs up his own stale blood with a noise like death. There’s water everywhere, water in his palms in his lungs filling up the little shadows that stretch across the floor pink-tinged and brackish and for a second he thinks he might really die right here at the spring, all alone in the water this is how it was meant to end? this is

not right, actually

?and he gives a last strangled gasp before he pushes himself onto his elbows and breathes. He’d fallen face-first into his pillows. Jake rubs his eyes and looks down at the floor.

The damage isn’t so bad. The cup only broke in thirds, looks like, though the bloody water will need mopping up. The lightheadedness is fading, so he gets up and steps gingerly over the broken glass to retrieve a towel and the trash can from the bathroom. The cut on his lip is aching. He uses the towel to pick up the glass pieces and throw them away, then starts to dry the water.

The door opens.

Jake starts and freezes in place, but he recognizes the figure in the doorframe. He blinks at them, raising his head like some homeless animal. They put their hands on their hips.

“Jake,” Dani says. “I heard that.”

The crash? The attempt at a scream? Was there something else?

He presses the towel down over the rest of the water. “Spilled my water glass. Don’t come this way.”

“Huh?” she says.

“It’s still wet. Give me a second.”

Jake has no idea how much blood was really in that cup, or if he can only smell it because it’s his, but he doesn’t want to take his chances with the vampire. For all he knows she can smell it from the door. He mops up best he can, then takes the towel to the bathroom and wrings it out in the sink.

“What are you doing here?” he says over his shoulder, trying to sound normal and feeling surprisingly successful at it. “You weren’t going to go to bed?”

“I was,” she says. “I took Aubrey to her room. Then I heard…”

It occurs to him she might not even know what she heard. He emerges from the bathroom and sits back on his bed.

“Not a big deal,” he says. “It was dark, I knocked over my cup. Probably woke half the lodge, anyway.”

Dani looks at him.

He fidgets. “What?”

“You should tell the truth,” she says.

_That I accidentally drank my own blood?_ He’d never live that down. “The truth is boring. Sorry, Dan.”

She finally closes the door behind her. “No.”

He resists the urge to back up against the headboard. Again: “What?”

“No, Jake,” she says, and steps toward the bed. “I’m sorry, but I can’t ignore this, not when we’re—when we’re family.”

There’s a knife through the heart. Jake knows Dani misses her family—her _real_ family—more than anything, fording through each day tortured by the knowledge that she will never go home again. They joke about her attachment to Aubrey, but in reality this is the first time Jake can remember that Dani has wanted something she couldn’t have back in Sylvain. It’s slow progress, but it’s sure.

And now this. _We’re family_. He’d be her real brother in a heartbeat if he could. Barclay would probably say that’s enough to make it true, but Jake knows it isn’t so simple. Not yet.

“Thanks, Dani,” he says. “I’ll be okay.”

“Sorry for hitting you a bunch earlier.”

He laughs. “Apology totally accepted.”

She smiles a little, but it fades away. “I know I didn’t—I know I wasn’t there. I didn’t see anything. But if you want to talk about it.”

The abomination. Mostly Jake can’t make up his mind. Unthinkingly he puts a hand up to his mouth and touches the scab, wonders if maybe the reason he bit down so hard was to wrench himself awake. That’s the thing, is he’s been trying since 2:17 and _running_ since 2:17 and for the love of chess and chocolate pancakes and his only sister Dani he cannot remember what he dreamt.

He holds out his hand to her, and she takes it and they sit back against the wall. He still hasn’t decided if he’s going to say anything, but it’s nearing 4:00 and his inhibitions took a nosedive right around the time Barclay told him _Don’t be mean_. He puts his head on Dani’s shoulder and thinks about what he remembers: dreams, water monsters, Sylvain. Other things? The matching quilts Mama gave them for their birthdays one year, like they were twins. A night in the woods just a few weeks ago under the glazed harvest moon, Aubrey clutching a dark bottle and leaning in to tell a secret. Snow in his eyes and mouth and Hollis laughing loudly as they ready aim fire another shot into the back of Jake’s helmet, _always straight for the kill, huh Hollie, never wanted to play fair did you Hollie!_ and another shriek of laughter as Keith pays them back with a handful of snow down their jacket.

There are lots of other things. But it’s hard to find what he’s looking for. It’s hard to say, _Hello, brain, if I could please just see the thing that tried to kill me. I would like to remember how I almost died._ And none of the wishy-washy stuff, either, no coy little hints or whispers—he needs the full before and after, the play-by-play. Maybe he doesn’t _need_ it. But here sits Dani, patiently holding his hand and waiting for him to detail how it feels when a wild Aqualung takes you hostage and tries to wrest apart your trachea from the inside, because she thinks he remembers.

“If it were summer it’d be getting light out soon,” she says. “That would really put a damper on things, don’t you think?”

He frowns up at her. “What?”

“It would ruin the mood. If we were pulling this fun all-nighter and suddenly the sun came up at four in the morning. You can’t make illicit pancakes if it’s light out.”

“You’re just a vampire.”

She seems not to have thought about it from this angle. “Hm.”

Jake thinks of the office at 2:31, her face in the cushions and her legs over his lap. Did he remember any more of it then? Has he forgotten gradually, the way dreams sometimes slip away before you notice they’re gone? He can’t decide if this was the worst one or the best one to become the sand in a board game hourglass.

“I don’t think I can describe it,” he says.

“I’m not asking you to,” she says. “I’m not asking anything. Just offering.”

He has become very conscious of his own breathing in the past few minutes. “I just hope they kill it.”

“They’ll kill it.” Her tone leaves no room for argument. “You’ll feel better once we can go back in the spring.”

Without meaning to he says, “Will I?”

She gives a tiny start. “Won’t you?”

Jake doesn’t say anything. He has no idea what’s going to happen once they’re allowed back into the spring. He doesn’t feel any looming dread when he thinks of the place, or enthusiasm to have its energy back—just a soft but constant sense of unease, drumming behind his ears like a headache. He never thought anywhere in Kepler would turn into that kind of unknown for him, much less someplace inside Amnesty Lodge. He realizes he’s clutching Dani’s hand harder than he means and relaxes his grip.

“It doesn’t matter right now,” he says. “Burn that bridge when we come to it.”

“Jake…”

“Don’t say stop avoiding the question.”

“I didn’t say anything,” she says. “Jake.”

He lifts his head off her shoulder. “Yes?”

There’s a pause. He gets the impression she’s trying to find the right way to ask a bad question. Dani takes a deep breath.

“I’m tired,” she says.

_Guess she didn’t figure out the right way._ “Me too. I’ve been up since, what, two-thirty?”

“I didn’t go to bed at all.”

He blinks at her. “Dani!”

“I know, I know,” she says. “But don’t try and turn this around. We’re talking about you right now.”

Jake takes that, considers it—really he wants nothing more than to ask, to wallow in it together, but Dani sounds like she’s all wallowed-out for the night. Briefly he allows himself to wonder if she even told Barclay what’s wrong or if he just pounced like the big fluffy empathetic teddy bear he is. Well, they’re stuck here. They’ll talk about it, someday.

Jake says, “I’m tired, too. Sleepover?”

She smiles, and the corners of her eyes crinkle with fatigue, but she smiles. “Sleepover.”

They haven’t had a sleepover in a while, not since Stern showed up and the residents of Amnesty Lodge entered a short period where everyone got antsy about moving around after hours. But he’s proven to be a sort of non-issue, and anyway Dani’s already here.

“You know, I wasn’t going to say it before,” she says, getting up, “but this room is _freezing_, Jake.”

He gives a sheepish laugh. “Sorry, I know. I like it cold.”

She shuts the window most the way. “That’s unfair to you. Aren’t you the one who takes snow baths?”

“They are not _baths_,” he says. “I simply _appreciate_ the snow. It’s not my fault no one else can see the value.”

“I see the value,” Dani says, and climbs back onto the bed. “The value is in you looking like a fool.”

“Do you even know how much blackmail I have on you?”

“Maybe I don’t,” she says, “but you’re a huge scaredy-seal, so I’m not worried.”

“Unbelievable,” Jake mutters. He collapses back onto his pillow. “I do you such kindnesses and this is how you repay me.”

She slumps down next to him. “Kindnesses such as blackmail threats?”

“Exactly, they’re just threats! They _are_ kindnesses. I could actually carry them out, see how you like it then.”

Dani rolls over with a melodramatic shake of her head and flicks her hair in Jake’s face. He swats her away and grins.

“Goodnight, Jake,” she says. “Don’t bleed on me. And _don’t_ wake me up before noon.”

He laughs impishly and hugs her, then blows in her ear. She yelps and shoves him off.

“Clingy! What, are you drunk? Bedtime.”

He rolls to the other side of the bed. “Cone sold stober. Goodnight, Dan.”

“Good_night_.”

It’s 4:01. Outside the window, morning birds have begun to gather and chitter at each other through the brush. A cold breeze is still drifting through the room, and he could stand for it to be a little colder, but Dani seems to like it. She pulls the blanket up over her face like she had done in the office, and Jake listens as her breathing deepens and slows, her fidgeting stops, and her grip on the blanket loosens.

He whispers, “Bet you wish I was Aubrey right now.”

She gasps—an indignant little _ugh!_—and elbows him in the spine, and by the time they stop giggling at this or at that the pale autumn sun has begun to rise over Kepler.

**Author's Note:**

> have i ever written a story without a graphic violence tag?? how did this pure family time end up having violence????


End file.
